I killed Him!

Up until today I had always thought of the priest as the one who killed the sacrifice in the Old Testament. A person would disobey one of the commandments, they would bring a lamb, or what have you depending on the sin and their personal financial status. The priest would kill the animal and then away they would go.

Leviticus 4:28-29 “Or if his sin which he hath sinned, come to his knowledge: then he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats, a female without blemish, for his sin which he hath sinned. And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the sin offering, and slay the sin offering in the place of the burnt offering.”

Who did the killing?

Go ahead read it again, the one who sinned. Not the priest, the priest would bring the blood before the lord. But the actual killing was done at the front door. And it was not done by the priest but by the one who had done wrong.

I sin, I kill. No one else can do the killing for me. To do the killing is to take responsibility. Only by killing the sacrifice can I receive forgiveness, for there can be no forgiveness without the shedding of blood.

Jesus became that sacrifice for you and I. We killed him by our actions, our failures, our disobedience, our sin. And tho I know that, I still find myself doing wrong, even when I know what’s right. Because of that sin he died, that willful, self-indulgence drove the nails through his hands and pierced his side.

If I would only pause a moment before I took that action. Stopped to see the creator of the universe, his body racked in agony, the consequences of my actions, would I behave the way I do? Or would I pause, contemplate the out comes of my actions. Stopping to take in the pain and suffering I cause because of my selfishness, maybe if I had to physically kill the Lord of all I would not run to sin so quickly. Yet I don’t, I often just plow ahead doing my own thing.

If you and I really believed that Christ died because of our sins would we ever purposefully sin again?